mark.waltz There are some moments in this war drama that can be constituted as classic. A discussion with soldiers over changing sexual ethics; a conversation between an American soldier playing the flute and a hidden German soldiers who offers to make it sound better. The crossing of paths with locales near the Belgian castle nearing its 1,000th birthday. Pretty scenery, interesting individual characters and some entertaining and often ironic situations. Oh, and virtually plot less.Burt Lancaster headlines as the one- eyed commanding officer, getting a historical viewpoint of the history as he plans how to get his troop out of there. Peter Falk delivers the typical cynical, acidic performance, taking the issue of the German flutist into his own hands. "I'm a soldier. That's what we do.", he says, following the analogy of the frog and the scorpion. Rarely in films about American soldiers do you see one where a character is as amoral and cold hearted as this one. Well, not until Tom Berenger in "Platoon" that is. The film hits its height nearing the end with an air attack that is quite brutal.When the plot does finally kick in (essentially their story of survival and keeping the Germans from taking over the castle), you are engrossed with what's happening, so it's easy to be inclined to think that it's a better film than it is. Going into Boris Karloff territory by basically playing exactly the same character that Karloff did in "The Last Patrol", Bruce Dern goes way over the top. Jean Pierre Aumont plays the list idealistic of the men trapped in the castle, but the least defined. This movie is just one variation of the reminder of how far the second world war reached, and instills the theory that we can't afford another one as it could be our last.

Spikeopath Castle Keep, directed by Sydney Pollack and adapted to screenplay by Daniel Taradash and David Rayfiel from the novel written by William Eastlake. Starring Burt Lancaster, Bruce Dern, Patrick O'Neal, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Peter Falk. Music is by Michel Legrand and cinematography by Henri Decae.Ambitious for sure, intriguing even, but ultimately a misfiring piece of pretentious tosh! An endgame allegory that finds Lancaster in WWII leading the defence of a medieval castle and its art collection against the German hordes. The action when it comes is savage and colourful, and Lancaster's one eyed Major is good fun, it's just everything else is masquerading as a near hallucinogenic anti-war movie mixed with euro pontifications. There's some war is hell messages in the mix desperately trying to get out, either as satire or serious (it's really hard to tell), but this is ultimately faux-art and painful to sit through until the explosions mercifully grace the last quarter of picture. 3/10

Robert D. Ruplenas I ordered this from Daedalus books. What can go wrong with a flick with Burt Lancaster, Peter Falk and Patrick O'Neal, and directed by Sydney Pollock? Plenty, as it turns out. Rather than a straightforward war story we have here a highly symbolic and quasi-surreal flick with a script that is both pretentious and portentous, filled with "heavy" lines that are supposed to freighted with meaning. The writer evidently is a Becket or Pirandello wannabe. However most of it just falls completely flat. It is beautifully shot and gorgeous to look at but is basically a tiresome bore. Ignore all the encomia from users. Matter of fact, ignore the movie.

MARIO GAUCI I had been wanting to check this one out for over 20 years (it used to be available as a VHS rental at the local outlet but I never got around to it) but especially after reading up on the film on the internet since its 2004 DVD release(s) where its unusual "artiness" a'-la Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961) was played up. Now that I've watched CASTLE KEEP for myself, all I can say is that it's arguably the strangest mainstream war movie ever and decidedly not for all tastes!The relatively large cast (for what turns out to be an introspective film) is uniformly excellent and is well up to the requirements of the brilliantly surreal, funny and literate script; Burt Lancaster, wearing an eye-patch throughout, has an unsympathetic role as the formidable leader of a group of misfit soldiers taking over a Belgian castle against unseen invading German troops. He is skillfully abetted by Peter Falk (as a soldier who abandons his post to indulge in his vocation as a baker), Jean-Pierre Aumont (as the "degenerate" owner of the titular castle), Patrick O'Neal (as a celebrated art historian all at sea on the battleground but well in his element surrounded by the castle's objets d' art), Scott Wilson (as a soldier who gets into quite a unique relationship – more on this later), Tony Bill (as the most spiritual of the men) and, the other side of the coin, Bruce Dern as a Bible-thumping conscientious objector who walks the Belgian rubbles with his ragged band of revivalist deserters-followers. The terrific cinematography of the awesome European locations – courtesy of Henri Decae – is complimented by a fine Michel Legrand score and, when they finally come, spectacular battle sequences.But it's the odd, surreal touches – including Scott Wilson falling in love with a Volkswagen, the same car rising from the sea after it has been drowned by his envious companions and floating ashore all by itself, the moving sequence between Tony Bill and an unseen German soldier (subsequently needlessly shot by Peter Falk) where the latter teaches the former how to play the flute correctly, the unusually realistic talk of fornication, sexual organs, impotence, the ambiguous (perhaps ghostly) nature of the characters involved and the events being enacted, etc. – which really make this show stand out from the crowd of WWII spectaculars and stick in one's memory – not to mention endear it to its legion of fans (who have famously decried online its original abominable pan-and-scan DVD incarnation, forcing Sony to re-release it in the correct Widescreen aspect ratio a mere four months later). The theme of the relevance of art in times of war brings forth comparisons to John Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN (1964), also starring Burt Lancaster, whose third (and final) collaboration with director Sydney Pollack – after the previous year's THE SCALPHUNTERS and THE SWIMMER (where Pollack replaced original director Frank Perry but goes uncredited) – this proved to be…perhaps as a result of the critical beating the film received upon its original release!